How James Bond's Costume Designer Made The Women More Feminist

When it comes to the James Bond movies, there are a couple things you can always count on. 007 is one of Great Britain's best spies, he enjoys a good shaken martini and he'll either work alongside or face off against a beautiful woman. But society has changed quite a bit in since the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, was released in 1962, and in the case of the Bond ladies, what they wore in the early 1960s wouldn't necessarily work well in one of the modern movies. With that in mind, Jany Temime, who was the costume designer on Skyfall and Spectre, opted for a feminist approach and garbed the women in clothing that they would actually want to wear in real life. Temime explained:

[For] the women, what they were wearing was sexy but was something we would all like to wear. They were very feminist, as well. I try to do my best to bring a lot of feminism in the sexuality of those ladies by giving them things we could wear ourselves. I don't mind a show-stopper dress, but it was something that they would have liked to wear and that they were not wearing because it was a man watching them.

As Jany Temime noted in her interview with Syfy Wire, the goal wasn't to make the women in either Skyfall or Spectre not look sexy, but to incorporate functionality and logic into their wardrobe. When looking at the outfits worn in past James Bond movies, sometimes it does indeed appear as if they were put together solely to satisfy the male gaze. There's nothing wrong with looking attractive in what you're wearing, but from Temime's perspective, it was also important that the women were wearing things that would likely be in their closet, thus instead of making the leading ladies from Naomi Harris' Moneypenny in Skyfall to Lea Seydoux's Madeleine Swann in Spectre (seen above) look overtly sexy, they come across as women in clothes you might meet in real life.

But it wasn't just the Bond ladies whose clothing Jany Temime adjusted in the newest movies. For James Bond himself, Temime wanted the character to look less "pompous." To accomplish that, she made Daniel Craig's suits in Skyfall and Spectre "very tight" so that he could move around more easily and show that he was flexible. More than 55 years after the James Bond film series launched, looking dapper and debonair is still important for its starring characters, but every now and then a different approach is required to pull that off.

Daniel Craig will make his fifth James Bond appearance in the yet-to-be-officially titled Bond 25, which hits theaters on November 8, 2019, is being directed by Danny Boyle and written by John Hodge. We here at CinemaBlend will provide the latest major updates concerning Bond 25 as soon as they come in, so for now, take a look through our 2018 release schedule so you can plan your trips to the movie theater later this year accordingly.

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